Beware, the Sporothrix

Lying “under the haystack fast asleep,” Little Boy Blue of nursery rhyme fame could not have suspected that he might become infected by the Sporotrichum schenckii. Clearly, like the rest of us, he has been lulled into believing that, unlike marsh hay, prairie hay does not harbor this fungus. Dahl and associates (p 1980) disabuse us of this notion. They report from Kansas an outbreak of lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis involving nine children who had been playing among bales of prairie hay, which were later proved to be contaminated by the Sporotrichum. Not only is the report the first to incrimina te a hitherto unsuspected source of mycotic contamination, but it is also the first to describe a large-scale epidemic of sporotrichosis in children.
Source: JAMA - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research